


One Bottle of Wine, Tenderly Tossed

by spirrum



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, writing prompt answers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 9,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4790678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirrum/pseuds/spirrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be perfectly honest, Hawke doubts even Varric could sell these stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. put your money where your mouth is (or hell, just put your mouth on me)

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr writing tag is something of a mess, so I've gathered all my loose fenhawke prompt answers in a small collection. Rating will vary but warned at the beginning of each chapter, and the prompts are in no specific order with regards to the games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr fancy word meme prompt "sphallolalia": flirtatious talk that leads nowhere. Rated T.

They don’t kiss. They don’t even touch. There are looks – eyes curved above a good hand of cards, and sidelong glances that never linger long enough to catch. And there are words, bandied between glasses of wine; under the arc of his blade and her quick-footed steps.

“I like a man who can swing a big sword,” she quips, and the raise of his brows tells her he hears what she’s really saying. And for a moment all the cards are on the table, and she’s showing her hand, and she’ll show him  _everything_  if he just–

Isabela snorts, and the moment breaks, shatters along with her courage, and Hawke grins and pretends it all a joke. And Fenris believes her – or, at least she suspects he does, anyway. Anything else is bordering too close to hope, and she and hope have not been on speaking terms for some time.

But then one afternoon, a book in his lap and a string of syllables wrapped with care around his tongue, to enunciate a word he doesn’t recognize, she says, “It sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?”

“I know a word far more beautiful.” And then he  _looks_  at her, and –  _Hawke_ , she thinks.  _Say Hawke._

Oh, she wants to kiss him. She wants to hear lewd things from that mouth, his voice against her skin. It’s not too much to ask, surely, with all the hints he’s dropping, but – therein lies the problem, doesn’t it? It’s a dance, but she doesn’t remember the steps; who leads and who follows. And it’s a dance where’s she been given two left feet, and his prolonged silences makes it feel like she’s lugging about bloody log. But someone needs to take the lead, Hawke knows that much, or they’ll be fumbling along like this into the next age. Perhaps if she just – spoke. No more veiled remarks, no more innuendo, just a good old fashioned, honest proposition.

_Right._  “Fenris, I–”

A door slams beyond the sitting room, and there are footsteps on the landing, purposeful strides that can only belong to one person, and Hawke swallows her groan.  _Balls._

The no-nonsense clank of armour rattles, and the Guard-Captain appears in the doorway, seemingly unmindful of the scene. Uncomfortably palpable tension means little when you’ve got a city to run, apparently. “Hawke, a word?”

_Co-ward, co-ward_ , her heart beats, but she rises with a smile, and hopes what Aveline is about to rope her into involves at least a small amount of gratuitous violence. A pathetic substitute for release, perhaps, but a desperate woman takes what she can get.  _Please, let it be bandits._

Fenris doesn’t move to follow, but his voice rises in his stead. “I will be here if you need me… _Hawke_.”

She stifles a hysterical laugh, pointedly ignoring Aveline’s look of old exasperation, and vows to find somewhere to scream her head off.

They don’t kiss.  _They barely touch._

And Maker take her, but Hawke doesn’t know how much more before she snaps.


	2. you're a taker, devil's maker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giftfic. Rated T/M.

A ficlet for [the-firefall](http://the-firefall.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr, written to this absolutely [gorgeous kiss she drew](http://the-firefall.tumblr.com/post/126836042418/can-i-ask-i-want-the-k-19-to-fhawke-x-fenris). (title from the song [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czj7SyPNRto))

 

* * *

 

He’s training, the muscles in his back shifting under slick skin with the strain of the exercise, holding her eyes from across the room. She hears his breath, a laboured rasp from deep in his throat, and he’s too preoccupied to notice where she stands, admiring the lethal elegance of his movements with an eagerness that will have her own breathing turn laboured if she doesn’t watch herself.

And – why had she come again? She’d had a reason, beyond simply seeing him, but for the life of her Hawke can’t remember what.

She also realizes that she’s staring.

“Nice moves,” she says, and almost doesn’t recognize her own voice. “Maybe Varric was wrong to think you were joking – maybe you do dance.”

Fenris turns; wipes a hand across his brow, and if she were any other girl she’d blame the midday heat for making her so lightheaded.

But Hawke is not. Hawke is Hawke, hungry gaze engaged in following a single droplet of sweat on its lazy, meandering path down his chest _._

A brow raises. The sweat has turned his hair to quicksilver, gleaming in the dim light. The bun sags, loose against the back of his skull. She feels, suddenly, like pushing her fingers into the damp mass; to tear the leather strap away and bury her hands in it. 

It’s a strangely compulsive thought.  

“Do you dance, Hawke?” he asks her then, and there’s something about the low quality of his voice that tells her he’s not really thinking about dancing. Not the strictly vertical kind, anyhow.  _Unless we’re being particularly adventurous today._

But, “Only at exceptionally boring parties,” she’s quick to add, despite the fact that her tongue feels too thick to wrap around the words. “And then very poorly. Fereldan dances aren’t exactly known for being elegant. On account of us all being raised by dogs, you see.”

“Hmm.”

And it’s that hum that’s her undoing – the casual sound made sensual by the deep drum of his voice. He’s looking at her now, the room between them, cool though the day is hot. She thinks of her errands – something on Aveline’s behalf, something…something…

_Oh, screw it._

“Dance with me.”

His eyes widen, just a fraction, but enough for her to know she’s made herself clear. And she loosens her shoulders from their tense clench, a gesture of surrender, though her smile is wickedly beckoning, asking for trouble.

“Hawke,” Fenris says, and it’s a warning, and one she’s heard many times.  _You’d stick your hand in a beehive just to prove you could_ , Carver had once told her, and hands itching at her sides now, Hawke is inclined to agree.  _It’s the only way to get the honey._

“You’re not going to leave a girl to dance by herself?” she asks then, and lets the implication sit between them, a heavy, heady thing. “That’s only half as fun as joining in, though if you want to  _watch_  I could always–”

Long strides across the floor, and there’s a quip waiting to leap from her tongue, but then his hands are on her wrists; her startled laughter bubbling up but silenced with the shove of his mouth against hers. And they’re walking, fluid, backwards strides though her mind is elsewhere, lost to the warmth of him, and her feet moving of their own volition. The wall is shockingly cold against her back, but the brief discomfort flees with the clench of his fingers around her wrists, hoisting her up, and the new angle has her toes brushing the floor.

It’s hell on her shoulder, and she thinks about telling him, mind working the words together for speaking–

Then he  _bites_ , teeth clamping down on the soft skin of her lip, and Hawke spits an oath, the words muffled against his mouth, surprised more than anything else. But the hurt is fleeting and soothed with his smile, and with her next breath her oath is another sound entirely, words dissolving into a low moan that makes her flush with how terribly  _lewd_  it sounds.

Fenris chuckles. Hawke thinks her knees might have given out, if he weren’t bearing her weight. Her braid hangs, a damp weight between her shoulder blades, and some of her hair has escaped, to curl against her brow. The skin around her wrists smarts from his grip, but she can’t find it in herself to mind.

“Is this how you dance in Tevinter?” she asks, breathless and laughing, and now it’s her turn to bite; to sink her teeth into his bottom lip, and tear a groan from his throat. She lets him keep his grip on her hands, but the slight parting of her legs is her counter. Oh, but she’ll be damned if she lets him take the lead as easy as that.

She doesn’t release his lip, and when she grins the bruised skin slips between her teeth, and his ragged breath pulls from somewhere deep, to be lost against her smile. “Silly me,” she says.  

“I should have asked for lessons sooner.”


	3. eyes up here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr fancy word meme promt "apodyopis": the act of mentally undressing someone. Rated T.

She’s been told she hasn’t a subtle bone in her body, and they’re probably right.

“You’re staring,” Isabela says, sidling up beside her to deliver the observation with a gleeful smile.  

“ _You’re_  staring,” Hawke counters, but doesn’t drop her gaze.

Isabela grins, but doesn’t deny it. “What can I say? I’m a thief, I’ve got eyes for booty.” A brow quirks, and Hawke guffaws – so loud it makes heads turn, and a flock of birds to take off from the nearest bush. Varric only raises a brow. Fenris looks wary.

_And rightly so._ Hawke clears her throat. “Sorry. Bad pun. Do carry on.”

They turn back so quickly she wonders idly if they’re afraid she’s going to tell them about it, and she levels the pirate with a look, which Isabela cheerfully ignores. “So, how goes the mental undressing?” the pirate asks instead. “Have you gotten to the pants yet? I’m so impatient, I go straight for the pants if I can. I should start with something else.”

Petulance makes her protest. “I’m not–”

“I bet he has  _great_  legs.”

Oh he does, but she swallows the words before the leap from her tongue. She has  _some_  sense of self-restraint, despite what her reputation would have the world believe.

“I wonder if the armour is tricky to remove,” Isabela muses.

It is, but Hawke would claim she’s become rather adept. She goes over the process in her mind – finds the catches and the small buckles; the one that always snags, and that will leave her frustrated and hissing against his skin. 

The sun is unusually hot, or maybe it’s just her, sweat clinging to her shoulders and the small of her back. She watches his own back a few paces ahead – imagines the shift of the muscles beneath the leather, beneath her hands…

Isabela hums. “You know, this little trek might not be so bad after all.”

Hawke snorts, but there’s agreement in the way her eyes linger, shameless in a way that she allows herself now, in good company as she is.

“There go the pants,” she offers then, a quiet murmur just for the two of them, and Isabela grins.

“Ooh. Patient girl. One day you’ll have to tell me your secret.”

Hawke laughs, but there’s really no secret, only the wish to prolong – the need to preserve the memories and sensations, in case something should happen. Something always happens, in Kirkwall. Bad things, usually. Regretful things. And selfishly she wants the memory of how it feels, to jimmy loose the fastenings of his armour and find his warm skin beneath; to push his jerkin off his shoulders, hands hungry and desperate. All her old lovers have faded, to inklings and shadows of what they were. She doesn’t want him to become a shadow, a remnant of her life she’ll only remember in glimpses – flashes of pale blue lyrium, and his tanned knuckles against her cheek.  

To Isabela it’s a game, an idle if sordid pastime. To Hawke it’s preservation, and she tucks each memory away; visits them when he’s not looking. If he suspects where her thoughts go, Fenris gives no indication, and he doesn’t question if she takes too long, or why her fingers sometimes tremble when they work loose his armour. One time will be the last, she knows, though the thought is too dark for her to speak.

“That’s not a look the thought of a naked man should elicit,” Isabela says then. “Well. Not a good looking one, anyhow.” But despite her humour, there’s a flicker of concern in her eyes. “Everything alright?”

Hawke breathes – pushes the ill thoughts away, to be replaced with his long legs. The plunging slope of his back. His arms, slender and strong, and the sharp jut of his hipbones. “Give me a moment.”

The pirate smiles, and understanding is met in the quirk of her lip, though they don’t speak the words. “There you go. All’s well that ends naked, I always say.”

And Hawke can’t help the laugh. Ahead, Fenris chances a glance over his shoulder, and she offers a smile of her own. 

“Indeed.”


	4. break, breathe, mend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr flower meme prompt, "raspberry": remorse; "yarrow": cure for a broken heart. Rated T. Set before and during Inquisition.

_He doesn’t tell her he loves her._

_I am yours_ , he’s said, more than once.  _I remain at your side_ , but their parting words are different. They are hard, vicious things, spat and thrown, parried like blows. They argue, the night before she leaves, and he feels her fury, her eyes alight with it and her words quick and sharp like a slap. They’ll regret this, they both know it, but that doesn’t stop them.  

She kisses him, or – it might be him who kisses her. And there’s no gentle love this night, and fear turns soft touches to gripping hands, fingers pulling and ripping, fabrics and hearts. After, they lie close, and he doesn’t know if it’s anger or exhaustion that finally drags him under, but he goes to the sound of her heart, the wet rasp of her breath.  

In the morning, she’s gone. There’s no note, but then he knows where she’s going. And for weeks he hears nothing, knows nothing. He travels, looking for distractions. He keeps his hands busy, as she would; as she no doubt is doing, wherever she is. The knowledge of Skyhold looms, a beckoning thought, but she’d made her decision, and explicitly told him not to follow. 

 _Not this time_ , she’d said. Spat. _Fenris, this is on me._

Then one day, a letter. Quality vellum, and he recognizes the handwriting before his eyes take in the contents, the descriptions of the events that have taken place, the siege of Adamant fortress and travels through the Fade. Sudden fear rends his heart asunder, and he has trouble breathing, because with each word he imagines the worst, imagines the  _unimaginable–_

His eyes latch onto the final sentence, and his battered heart stops. 

_She’s on her way home, wherever that is these days. Thought you’d like to know. – V.T._

And Fenris doesn’t know where home is any more than Varric, but Hawke finds him, regardless – turns up one day with a broken nose and a foolish, wicked grin, missing a tooth, and she’s never looked worse, he thinks. And there’s no anger, now. Instead he laughs until he’s on the verge of tears, and she shrieks when he kisses her; when he buries his hands in her hair and pulls her to his very soul. He feels the copper of her split lip, remembers his regrets in the taste of it, and when he breathes he tells her, everything. Twice over.

Hawke’s own laugh is a shudder, holding more than just mirth. “A simple  _welcome back_  would have sufficed, you know,” she quips, breathless. “Not that you’ll hear me complaining, although my lip hurts like a mother–”

He smothers the words, her poor wit that he’s missed more than she’ll ever know, though maybe he’ll tell her that, too, and he feels her smile and her tears, her guilt and her forgiveness. 

And his heart, mending under her touch.


	5. if, when

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr flower meme promt, "zinnia": I mourn your absence. Rated G.

“Hawke,” he says, as he often does. Some days it’s a warning, others a plea. Sometimes he’ll gasp it into the dip of her throat and sometimes he’ll wake with it on his tongue, a pungent taste only swallowed when his frantic hands find the warm weight of her beside him.

Today, though – today it’s many things. A question –  _are you sure about this?_  Acceptance –  _I know why you’re doing this_. Support –  _I am at your side._  A plea –  _so take me with you._

A warning, to  _come back_ , because he knows he cannot follow down this path.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, breezily as is her way. “Varric wouldn’t send for me if it wasn’t important, but I’ll manage. I always do.” She tries to smile. “You’ll wait for me?”

It’s a question she knows the answer to, but she asks it regardless, and Fenris knows why. Because even a woman as strong as Hawke needs to know the foundation of her own life will keep standing, even if she lets go of the weight to help bear that of the world.

The hard line of her mouth is a sharp conviction, but grief is vivid in her eyes, heavy blue skies beneath the fall of her fringe. Fenris wonders when he’ll see them next.  _When_ , because he has no time for  _if_  – hasn’t the heart to imagine it, though he can tell her mind has already visited the thought.

A hand against her hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands, finding the smooth curve of her ear, her jaw, the leap of her pulse. He breathes in the salt and sun of Kirkwall, and wonders what she’ll smell like next – frost and Fereldan mud. He hopes.  _He hopes._

“I’ll miss you,” she says.  _I already am,_ he hears.

“You won’t be gone long,” he tells her.  _You already are,_ he knows.

She kisses him with fervour, hot and insistent with a sob on her breath, and what he wouldn’t give for one more night, just to be sure. Just to be sure he remembers, if–

But he has no time for  _if_.

She’s already gone when she draws her lips from his. And she’s already gone when she boards the ship. She has been, since Varric’s letter had made its way into her hands, calling her to a duty that should not be hers but that is, no matter how far she runs.

She’s already gone, and he feels her absence keenly – has felt it for days in the restless tremble of her hands. Unspoken  _ifs_ sit on his tongue, waiting. He can feel them.

He wonders how long before he speaks them.


	6. a rare peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr flower meme prompt, "sweet pea": delicate pleasures. 
> 
> Rated M. Slightly nsfw.

Their lives are hard, but they’re not with each other.

It’s difficult to believe, brash and wild of spirit as they are, hands rough-palmed and unforgiving, hers a farmer’s fingers but marked most by the grip around her apostate’s staff, and his, rending hearts and rending flesh like sullied silk and sparing both barely a second glance. And they’ve been rough with each other, too – have broken each other more than once, but despite everything (her impulsivity, his fury,  _her tenacity, his regrets_ ), they’ve found a quiet place for themselves in this tumult of a city that has no time for respite.

Her head is a gentle weight against his collar, the tangle of her hair still soft from her bath, not brittle with blood and dirt, as is the city’s payment for her efforts. And her touch is the tickling pad of her fingertips along his ribcage, deceptively light for a woman of her sharp edges, but there’s insistency in the way she presses against him, the thin fabric of her robe slipping up her thighs, yielding her skin to his hands, no less rough than hers but careful where he digs his fingers into her hips.

They’re not always this unhurried, but the thick summer heat curls in her hair and on her hot breath, and when she sinks onto him her hum is low and slow and laughing with a pleasure rarely heard but over the rim of a glass of wine, those nights she lets herself go. But they are few and far between now, and he finds himself aching for the smile he remembers, from that first night when the blood had bled dark on the stones and her mouth had curved, wicked like the half-moon overhead.

“Not falling asleep on me, are you?” she teases, out of breath and coy in a way that makes him grip her just a little bit harder, if only to pull that soft laugh from her throat. Sweat coats her skin with a fine sheen, and when she licks her lips she leaves a grin, and it tastes of salt and desire when she bends down to kiss him, hair spilling over freckled shoulders to brush against his chest. His next thrust speaks of a teetering control, but Hawke only grins and grins, and he contains himself with effort. The lazy rhythm is so unlike them, but it’s what she needs, Fenris thinks, when she sighs against his mouth and her breath dissolves to a pleased groan. 

“ _Hawke_ ,” he says,  _rasps_ , and only that, but it’s urgent and reverent and infuriatingly pleading but he doesn’t care if he sounds like he’s coming apart, because it’s not far from the truth. She still burns, but not like she had, once. It’s a different kind of burn, a different kind of heat, and he goes willingly now – lets it envelop him as she does, heat and slick skin and the fall of her damp hair against her arching back as she rocks against him with a cry that sounds too soft for a woman he’s heard cuss up a storm over less. But it reaches places in him rarely touched, and when he wraps his arms around her next it’s with a care he offers nothing else ( _no one else_ ).

“It’s past noon,” comes her mumble, when she stretches out beside him after. And Fenris doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be an observation or an accusation, but she doesn’t sound terribly upset, either way.

“It can wait a little longer,” he says. The city won’t fall apart without her if left unattended one afternoon.

Her snort is a breath against his ear. “You say that like you believe it.” But she doesn’t move to get up, and when she breathes next she sinks further against the mattress, against him, unmindful of her open robe and the cool peppering of goosebumps along her arms. He tucks his nose into her hair, damp again now but smelling of something rather different than soap. 

And even if he doesn’t believe it, Fenris wills the city to wait; to give her another moment to catch her breath. Because it’s a rare thing, this quiet, and they are rarer for it, their hard souls made harder still by stone and sea and ever-looming gallows. He’s a free man but he can’t give her the world, or even half of it, but he can give her this. A poor man’s gift, perhaps, but by the pleased and tired sound that slips from her mouth only to be lost amidst the pillows, he doesn’t for a moment doubt its worth.


	7. ligatures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr flower meme prompt, "gladiolus": you pierce my heart. Rated T.

In the literal sense, it’s not pleasant, and she’s seen him do it more times than she can count – so many, in fact, that she barely bats an eye these days. There’s always a pause, a breath before impact, followed by a sound that is almost comically grotesque. And then it’s out, giving its last, desperate shudder in the palm of his hand. 

No, it’s definitely not pleasant, this literal breaking of hearts. But in the strictly figurative sense, Hawke supposes it doesn’t hurt any less.

“I gave my heart once,” she says one day. “To the baker’s boy.”

He looks up from the book in his lap, a curious tilt to his brow, and this is news to him, Hawke knows. A rare glance into her old life, one that isn’t strictly about scenic farm life and the pastoral joys of Ferelden’s apostates, both of which are her usual go-to answers when pressed about her past.  _I ploughed fields. I bathed in the brook._ So many dull half-truths, hiding more than they reveal.  

_I somtimes said I was going to plough the fields, but in truth we spent the day necking behind the fence. I bathed in the brook, hoping he’d see and join me._

“I think I was in love,” she says next, running absent fingers along the scar on her leg, a pretty reminder of an old bear-trap in the tall grass. It had been the day they’d first been properly introduced. He’d found her sister, screaming her head off that  _Marian Hawke is dying_ ,  _please come help!_ , and he’d dropped the loaves he’d been carrying to do just that.

She hadn’t been dying, of course. She’s rarely  _dying_ , though she does have a penchant for exaggerating her aches and pains, but she’d curbed her screams when he’d crouched beside her, flour on his hands and flour in his dark hair, and told her promptly that she was going to be fine.

And she had been. She’d been fine that whole summer, while her leg had healed and he’d stopped by the farm with fresh cakes and strawberries from the field. She’d been fine that winter, sneaking off despite the chill to kiss behind the barn. And she’d been more than fine that spring, when she’d laid herself bare under the cold sun and given him everything.

She’d been fine, until she wasn’t, the day he’d plainly told her it wasn’t going to work.

 _“Was it that bad?”_  she’d joked, for the first time but not the last, and her voice had trembled then, too, though she’d had her inexperience to blame. Her innocent, trusting heart.

He hadn’t contradicted her, and when he’d offered it back her heart was not the same, and she was not the same. Prone to exaggerate her injuries, perhaps, but she didn’t speak a word of this, not for years. Not until today, and she doesn’t know why she’s saying it now, here, to him.

Fenris sits beside her, and it’s not flour that makes his hair white, and there’s no flour on his hands, clean though she knows the things they could do. The things they have done. Things far more macabre than the gentle kneading of dough. 

“What happened?” he asks at length, when her silence has stretched long as the sun’s rays across the floorboards.

Hawke shrugs. Attempts levity. “He broke it. For a baker he had very clumsy hands.”

The book snaps shut, but softly. She feels him shift on the sofa. “He was a fool,” he says.  _I was a fool,_ she hears, and for all her old hurts it makes her smile.  

She takes one warm hand, and winds her fingers through his. “I was young then.”

A low rumble, wary as he is. “And now?” 

Hawke snorts. “Older. Not much wiser, I’m afraid. Still giving hearts away.”

He is quiet for a long moment. “And how is your heart now?” he chances. 

Hawke tilts her head back, until she can look at him. The late sun paints his hair white (white as flour, white as the spring clouds, the foam in the brook), slanting across his brow and the curve of his lips.

Marian Hawke exaggerates her injuries, or so the word goes, but she’s never pretended they were lesser than they were, and she’s not about to start now.

And so, “Better,” she says. Then, “And how is your heart?”

And she means it as a joke, but “Yours,” he says, without pause, as though it’s the simplest thing; as though they live simpler lives, in a simpler world. Pretty, pastoral farm lives with the harvest their only worry.

“Oh,” Hawke breathes, her surprise escaping with the purse of her lips.

An odd smile tugs on his mouth. “This surprises you?”

It does and it doesn’t, because she knows, of course she does. But old hurts linger long, and Hawke finds she is more surprised at just how long  _this_  hurt has festered, though it’s been years since she last thought about that first and disastrous romantic venture.  

“I am no baker,” Fenris tells her then, when she hasn’t answered. And it’s hard to say why he says it, but the malice with which he speaks the word draws laughter from her belly.  

“And thank the Maker for that,” comes her answer now, light and easy like her heart, and with the admission she tucks that old ghost away, perhaps not for good, but for now. But now is all she needs, and all she has ever needed from him. 

She tells him as much. 

“You have me for as long as you wish, Hawke,” Fenris says, and she wants to laugh again, laugh at her silly fears and her silly heart. She thinks of the baker’s boy, the flour that had made his hands soft, though they’d still broken what she’d given. Fenris’ hands are not soft, and though he’d broken her once, too, there is mending in the way he settles back against the sofa, pulling her to him and tucking his nose behind her ear. 

“Forever too long for you?” she asks then, lets the query slip into the sunlit quiet. 

A smile against her hair. “No,” he says, stitching old lesions with sincerity. 

“Not with you.”  


	8. spellbound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr flower meme prompt, "witch hazel": a spell. Rated T/M.

His loathing of mages doesn’t make him immune to their tricks, it would seem. But this is not a spell she ever meant to cast, for though her fingers are reckless with their weaving of thunder and fire and she often miscalculates the lethal trajectory of her magic, Fenris is sure Hawke did not intend  _this._

Regardless, the spell is cast with her deep-bellied bark of a laugh, reaching places within him thought long lost, and when she looks at him from across the table with  _that_ gleam in her eyes he is the one who is lost. The whole of him, mind and soul and his weary heart.

And she doesn’t mean to, Fenris knows, but he can’t help but resent her for it, when the urge strikes him to reach for her – to touch her neck, her sharp jaw, and to draw that laughter from her belly, only to smother it against his lips. He starves for the feel of her, his yearning an ugly, desperate thing, but with every laugh the spell settles further, sinks under his skin until it’s carved into his bones. And the day he finally does touch her is the day he succumbs – the day he lets the full, violent force of it consume him, as he does her, until she’s the one who’s left gasping for air and the desperation is hers, not his.

He leaves her, still under the spell. It pulls on his limbs, like strings on his heart, but he’s been a puppet once and he won’t be again, though she doesn’t mean to,  _he knows she doesn’t mean to._

“Was it that bad?” she asks, the words light, but he can’t string his own together, still at the mercy of her touch, the bewitching chant of her voice. 

“Fenris,” she says then, magic in her words and magic in her very being, but all he can do is walk away, because she’s burning too bright for him to touch, and though his heart aches and his bones ache he dredges up his very last ounce of strength to resist. 

“Forgive me.” And he speaks the words around the vice on his tongue, wrapped with the sealing spell of her kiss, and though he wants to he can’t speak the words she deserves to hear.  _I am yours,_ and he is, he’s been since she’d first snorted into her wine glass at something he’d said, spellbound in a way that is no mage’s doing but hers, all her, and though his stubborn resistance is all him, he knows, oh he knows there’s no walking away from this. 


	9. first impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr sentence meme prompt, #38: "You fainted. Straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn't have to go to such extremes." 
> 
> In which a very iconic meeting happens...a little differently. Rated T.

The hunter hits the ground with the doughy  _thud_  only a dead body can truly manage, before Hawke’s eyes are drawn to the figure stepping out of the shadows.

“Your men are dead,” a voice says – a deep, resonant drum of a voice that holds the sensual promise of a quick, clean death. “And your trap has failed. I suggest running back to your master while you can.”

It’s an – elf, she notes with some surprise, but pleasant surprise, as he cuts a rather striking figure, for all that he’s an odd sort.

What happens next happens almost too fast for her to follow. The Captain speaks. Something glows, lyrium blue and bright in the dark, before their adversary lies gasping out his last breath on the cobblestones.

 _Oh my,_  Hawke thinks, and finds herself rather impressed.

“I am not a slave,” the stranger says, and – promptly keels over.

It’s the last thing she expects, but then the same could be said for the past ten minutes of her so far rather eventful night, and she’s glad of her field-ploughing days when she dives in to grab him, for he’s heavy, despite what his deceptively lean frame suggests.

And he’s awake and kicking again before she’s had time to kneel, scrambling out of her arms like a startled Mabari pup.

“What – what happened?”

“You fainted,” Hawke says, strangely delighted by the fact. “Straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes. Though I suppose I could say the same for that fancy hand-trick of yours.”  

He’s watching her now, green eyes sharp things beneath the heavy fall of his fringe, and looking like he doesn’t quite know what to make of her.

All in all, quite a common response for Hawke.

“Oh. You’ve a little–” she motions to his midsection, stained dark with something that she’d first thought was someone else’s blood. Apparently not. 

He looks at it, brows pulling together, as though having difficulties comprehending the existence of the wound. And then an oath falls from his lips in a language she does not know, but that makes something hot curl up somewhere below her ribcage.

“I – apologize,” he says then, pressing a hand over the wound, though Hawke can’t tell exactly what he’s apologizing for. “When I asked Anso to provide a distraction for the hunters, I had no idea they’d be so – numerous.”

“Evidently,” Hawke says. “So you’re responsible for this then?” she asks, waving a careless hand at the carnage at their feet.

“I’m the reason you’re here, yes.”

She takes a moment to consider him, gauntlet stained red with blood and holding his wound casually-as-you-please, and talking like he didn’t just topple like a fir into her arms. But he looks no worse for wear, though there’s a sheen of sweat along his brow that makes her pause. “And will you be alright…?”

“Fenris,” is her answer, though she’d not counted on getting it. “And – yes. I’ve had–”

“Worse?” she suggests, with the glibness she’s been told will get her shanked one day. But she’s pleased when the corner of his mouth quirks, just a bit.

“Indeed.”

Oh, she likes this one, Hawke decides, open wound in his side but time for humour yet, dry and dark though it may be.  

“Hawke,” she greets back, cheerfully despite the blood. 

“And whatever your plans, Fenris, you most certainly have my attention now.”


	10. stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr "things you said" meme prompt "things you said when you were scared"
> 
> Warnings: illness, anxiety. Rated T.

She wields fire and lightening with the snap of her fingers, and deadly frost coats her veins when she dances, a waltz with danger and death on feet that are always just a little too quick to trip. Every time he fears, and every time she comes out on the other side with her scrapes and scratches, easily healed and easily forgotten. There are other things that leave lasting marks –the Arishok’s aim, and a bandit’s knife in a Darktown alley in a rare moment of inattention. Fenris knows both scars, reminders for him more than for Hawke, to whom they are just two of many.

She’s always just quick enough, just lucky enough to evade, to cheat Death and the Maker’s wrath with a smile and a sharp remark. Fenris doesn’t think her invincible, and would never make the mistake of doing so, but for all his care to remind her of it, it’s not magic or battle or even her own recklessness that drives her closer to the brink than she’s ever been.

Hawke falls ill. 

It’s such a mundane thing,  _illness._  Such a common thing, utterly unfitting for a woman larger than life and the sky and the world. And she’s been sick before, he remembers well her exaggerated moans and fever dreams, but this is different. This leaves her thin and faint, a skeletal shadow of her own smiles and laughter, limbs weak where they lie tucked beneath the covers. And he’s never seen her take up less space, curled on her side with her shallow breaths, shivering and frail.

The abomination sits vigilant for days, but for all his power Anders is as helpless as the rest of them, and Fenris is too tired to summon even a shred of his usual anger. Hawke’s bedside is as crowded as her heart, but she sleeps through most of the visits; Varric’s mock-cheerful recounting of current events and Merrill’s glassy eyes. Aveline prowls, a quiet presence, keeping guard though there is nothing to guard but Hawke’s own silence. Fenris has a feeling Isabela is there mostly to keep him company, but despite her claims of not having the patience for sick people, her hand lingers on Hawke’s every day before she leaves, and she has a kiss to spare for a feverish brow though the stench of sick clings to the very walls. 

They come and go as the days crawl by, the abomination most of all, but in the night hours Fenris is the one who keeps vigil, fingers tangling in her sweat-slicked hair, and her sigh is cool against his hand where her cheeks burn with an unnatural fever that won’t release its grip. And he is frightened, an illness in its own right, wearing away at his strength and leaving a numbness that begins to feel more and more like resignation with every passing day.

“That you would leave me this way,” he says one evening, when they’ve all left and it’s just him and Hawke and the sickness, a companion that never leaves, no matter how much he begs it, for his threats are empty in the face of this enemy. And he doesn’t have anything to blame, not really, which only makes it worse. He could blame magic, perhaps, because it might not have been the cause, but it has not been her saviour, either. But however much he tries, he can’t summon enough anger to condemn it. 

“ _Hawke_ ,” is all he manages, and it’s a plea as much as it is a demand, but Hawke doesn’t respond, and her fever burns a wound against his palm, until he thinks it might consume him, too. 

Then one morning the mage  _breathes_  and it’s with relief not sorrow, and Fenris is out of his chair on unsteady feet, because he’s not slept in days, but though he can sense his consternation, Anders knows not to bother with reprimands. 

“Her fever is down,” he says instead, and it’s a small thing, but Fenris takes it greedily, and when he reaches with desperate hands towards her face, he finds the truth it the mage’s words against his skin. 

“What does it mean?” he asks, becase illnesses are deceitful things, not like mortal wounds that will either take you cleanly and without remorse, or claim you slowly but honestly. There is nothing clean about an illness like this, and he won’t put his hopes in such a fleeting change.   

And Anders doesn’t bother with words of comfort, either, knowing full well that’s not what Fenris is looking to hear. “It means that she’s not gone yet,” he says simply, and it’s an honest answer, and it’s enough, at least for now.  _But for how long will it be so?_

But she comes to late in the afternoon, and he feels it by the curl of her fingers around his, a pale imitation of her ususually sure grip, but it’s more than he’s had in days, and he takes this too, another small relief for a starved heart that will fight for scraps if needed. 

“Who said anything about leaving?” she mumbles, eyes red-rimmed but bright beneath her dark hair. “Was it you? It must have been, you know I’d never be that defeatist.”

Her cheek still feels warm beneath his palm where he cradles it, but there’s new strength in her smile, and Fenris breathes a little easier. He doesn’t have it in himself to laugh – not like her, who stands smiling on Death’s doorstep with one foot already across the threshold. “Although I admit I was a little worried back there,” she adds, almost sheepishly. 

“Were you,” he murmurs, and his voice sounds thick, too rough for wit, but it makes the corner of her mouth lift. Her own hand comes to rest on his cheek.

“And you’ve kept a level head as always, I see,” she says, and the lie is for his sake, although he doesn’t need it. But maybe she does.

And he laughs now, a nearly helpless sound as he pulls her close. She still smells like sick, and there’s sweat above the arch of her parched lips. “One of us needs to,” he tells her, and she snorts, but no joke follows, and that fact alone tells him of her own fear, even more than her hands curling against his back.

“You should know better by now,” she mumbles into his neck, but he catches the soft tremble beneath her words. “I’m not leaving. Well, not in anything short of a fiery inferno, anyway. I’ve got an image to preserve, or so Varric says.”

Fenris doesn’t laugh at that, nor does he tell her that’s what he’s afraid of. But having seen her slowly wasting away to something beyond even her own strength, he doesn’t deny her the comfort of that bold statement. 

“Everything in its own time, Hawke,” he says instead — vows it, and slams the door in Death’s face. 

At least for one more day.


	11. a homecoming of sorts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the domesticity/intimacy meme prompt #29. Forehead touching. 
> 
> Rated T. Set post-Inquisition.

When she tracks him down she’s limping, half-delirious, spider guts and dragon shit in every crack and crevice of her armour, but her smile cleaves a brilliant arc beneath eyes that have never looked more alive. 

She finds her long-sought respite in the cage of his arms, and draws the strength she needs to keep standing from the weight of his brow pressed against her own. A silent greeting when there are no words to be found, of her journey or his. But she feels his relief as her own, tense shoulders sinking beneath the touch of her hands, the nudge of her nose against his. There are people watching, heads poking through open windows and looks that linger on the strange pair that has come together in the centre of the village. There are more refugees than locals and the air carries the putrid stench of fish and ever-dwindling hopes, but Hawke thinks she’s never felt more at home.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I won?”

His sigh falls on her cheeks, better than a kiss. “No.”

“Afraid you’ll regret asking?”

His laughter might just be the dearest sound she knows. “ _Hawke_.”

“What?”

His hands come to cradle her head, a wordless gesture that says more than he will. 

“Varric told me where you were,” she says; speaks the words against his mouth, so close to her own. “Or a rough estimation, anyhow.” She doesn’t ask him if he’s stayed in the same place for her sake, in case she came looking.

She tries not to think about  _in case_.

“I’m done,” she says instead, and hopes he hears the promise. “I’m – here. For good, this time.” The world will manage without her, for better or worse. Let her be selfish, for once.

She feels his smile, that rare and dear curve of his lips. She reeks of the worst things the world and the Fade have to offer, but he holds her close without remorse, as though she is precious enough to deserve his gentleness; his patience and understanding.

“You need a bath,” Fenris says then, the most he has spoken since she found him, and in the words Hawke finds herself, not precious at all but bone-tough, prone to poor humour and an inclination towards carrying the signs of her battles on her person. It’s been a long time since anyone made her feel like herself.

And sprained ribs aching with every breath, Hawke laughs until she cries. 


	12. in sickness, in health

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the domesticity/intimacy meme prompt #5. Taking care of the other while sick. Rated T.

“Hawke?”

All she can manage is a groan, but she feels it’s something of a considerable feat, as far as her current state goes. 

She’s on the floor by the chamberpot, curled on her side and with her cheek pressed flat against the cool tiles. The taste of bile is still a sharp reminder on her tongue, and there’s an ache in her limbs, and  _Maker but she’s never felt so poorly in her life_.

The soft tremors of approaching footsteps creep across the floor and she feels them in her bones, but then there are fingers in her hair, curving warm against her scalp, followed by the press of a palm against her brow. And despite the fact that she’s sweating through her shift, Hawke shivers. 

“You have a fever.”

“Am I dying?”

Fenris snorts. “Of exaggeration, perhaps.” His hands are on her back then, below her soaked shirt, and they’re not warm at all but cool, she finds, and when she sighs she feels like she could sink right through the floor.  

“Orana?”she tries.

“Taken ill,” he answers, and she doesn’t know if she imagines the slight twinge of amusement in his voice. “And being much less pitiful about it.”

Hawke tries to snort, but it requires too much effort and so she settles for a noise that’s not quite there but close. “I just expelled what feels like every dinner I’ve ever eaten. I’m entitled to some misery, surely.” Her words are slurred, like they’re too large for her tongue to wrap around with her usual eloquence, and she’s too tired to move her head to look at him when she speaks. 

But Fenris doesn’t bother with undue talk, and his hands are gentle as they slip beneath her back and below her knees. And Hawke doesn’t have it in her to protest, even as her small world tilts and her stomach roils in protest when he lifts her. 

That first, fever-wrought day he carries her to bed, tucks the covers around her even as she wiggles back out of them – they’re too warm, too constricting and damp with her own sweat, but his insistence outlasts her own and when he finally leaves the room Hawke is too exhausted to kick them off. In the hours that follow she drifts in and out of consciousness, sometimes waking to empty her stomach over the side of the bed into the bowl he’s placed there, and other times without the faintest idea of where she is. But his hands are always there, to grip hers when her fingers tangle in the sheets, frantic from fever-dreams. They are steady on her back, on her brow and against her racing heart, and she makes note somewhere at the back of her muddled mind of the mattress dipping with his weight, and of his warmth a constant thing beside her in the night’s long hours as shivers grip her skin with cold and clawing fingers.

He is there when she falls into a fitful slumber, but when she wakes the following morning Hawke is alone, and the room is quiet, the air stale and smelling of sleep and sick. It takes her considerable effort to get out of bed, desperate for fresh air, and she moves through the corridors of her home like a shadow, back bent and bare feet dragging along the cool floorboards.  

She admits to feeling some surprise, when she finds him sleeping by the chamberpot in the privy. 

He doesn’t quite manage the same, natural gracelessness as she. Instead he’s sitting upright, head tilted back against the wall, and he could have been resting, but there’s a sheen of sweat clinging to his brow, turning his hair damp and silvery in the soft morning light, and Hawke is not fooled. 

With the covers still tucked around her, she eases down beside him, and though he doesn’t so much as twitch she knows he wakes by the slight shift in his breath, laboured like after a long battle.

“You should be in bed,” he rasps, and – it’s almost a groan, but he holds it back with commendable effort. Hawke almost feels like smiling, because of course he’s the sort to be in denial about his own health.  

“Couldn’t let you hog the chamberpot all to yourself,” she retorts with surprising ease, before adding, “Mine is full.”

That makes him groan in earnest, and now she grins, and – regrets it. Her face hurts —  _Maker, everything hurts_ — and they make a rather sorry pair sitting there by the wall, but when she leans her head against his shoulder Fenris sinks against her in turn, and there’s company to be found in their shared misery, at least.

“We should get back to bed.”

“Yes,” he agrees, but he doesn’t move, and Hawke can’t be bothered, either.

“I’d carry you if I could,” she murmurs against his shoulder, parched lips brushing his fever-warm skin. He’s foregone his armour, his tattoos bared and glowing softly in the dim light. The sight of them makes her dizzy, and Hawke shuts her eyes; feels the soft pounding above her brow.  

The noise he makes could have been a scoff, but it sounds too tired. “I would rather you did not attempt it.” 

“I’ll get you some water,” she tries then, because she feels like she should do something, even as exhaustion pulls on her limbs with an alluring insistence. 

” _Rest_ , Hawke,” Fenris says, the demand such a weak thing and the words lost in her hair, but she’s already long gone. 

 

* * *

 

She wakes in her own bed, and without a clue to how she got there. 

Fenris is asleep beside her, back turned and snoring softly. There is a cool cloth slowly warming on her forehead, and the sheets are drawn all the way up to her chin. 

She lifts her head with some effort, eyes bleary and blinking into the dark. The drapes she doesn’t often bother with have been drawn shut, but there’s a soft pool of light on the carpet where the sun has crept through. The rest of the chamber is painted in shadows, one of which moves, suddenly, from where it’s been sitting in the chair pulled up beside the bed. 

Hawke’s eyes are still straining, but the armour that comes into focus is familiar, and she doesn’t need to see either to know the russet hair and the freckled nose that accompanies it. 

Aveline wordlessly takes the cloth and wrings it, before putting the cooler side back over Hawke’s brow. 

“You will mention this to no one,” she says, and Hawke is tempted to ask if it’s an order or a request, but for once her thoughts seem too quick for her mouth to keep up. “His fever is down, but yours is persistent, though that’s no surprise,” Aveline continues. “Fluids and rest, that’s what my mother always recommended.” 

She hears the words as they are spoken, blunt and efficient as the woman herself, but Hawke is not yet lucid enough for them to properly register. “Did you carry us here?” she asks instead, finding the thought (and the accompanying image) a small marvel. “Both of us?”

A brow raises. “Don’t sound so amused — you’re heavier than he is,” Aveline declares dryly, and Hawke finds some consolation in the knowledge that she’s regained enough strength to hurl her pillow at the retreating Guard-Captain’s head. 

“Get better, Hawke,” she says over her shoulder, her smile almost too quick for her to catch. “I need to get back to the barracks. Merrill will be by later to check on you.”

Then she is gone, and Hawke, still a little dazed, sinks back into the mattress, sheets still unpleasantly damp, but the urge to empty her stomach has settled somewhat, at least _. A small mercy._ There’s still the persistent ache that seems to sit just beneath her skin, but when she turns over on her side she finds comfort in the warm curve of his back.  

“Fenris?”

A grunt is her answer, muffled by his pillow (Hawke laments the lack of her own), but when she tucks her brow into the groove of his throat, the cool cloth pressing against his skin, a low sound of contentment follows, and she smiles. 

They don’t move, even as the hours crawl by on sluggish feet and the sliver of sky visible through the drapes turns dark. Hawke hears when Merrill stops by — catches the movement of light footsteps across the carpet, the missing pillow placed carefully beside her head and the featherlight pressure against her cheek — and the door sliding shut when she leaves. They’re taking turns, then, and the knowledge makes her smile, remembering a long-ago time, and the smallpox that had swept through Lothering one summer. Carver and Bethany had taken turns holding her hands, to make sure she didn’t scratch her blisters. 

“Isabela will be next,” comes the warning, a low rumble muttered into the quiet, and Hawke chuckles. 

“I hope you’re wearing pants."  

” _Hawke_.” 

"Well you know she’s not coming to clean the chamberpots.”

Fenris groans, and Hawke — Hawke feels a little better.  


	13. overgrown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated G. Set post-Inquisition.

It’s rained recently. The ground underfoot is slippery with mud, the sky overcast and grey. Typical Fereldan weather, and for her it is a  _welcome-home_ , he knows; the sigh of the damp earth, and the cool mist that wraps about them both.

She walks a path out of memory, and he follows, silent at her back. Few houses still stand. The foundation of the village Chantry looms, dark and skeletal. Charred wooden remains jut from the earth at odd angles, giving the impression of a graveyard, though the truth is not far off. They skirt around the ruins, and her eyes don’t linger long, seeing more than just what remains of the buildings. People. Chantry sisters. Soldiers and templars. A family of apostates, escaping the Blight.

They’ve been walking away from the village, and he’s about to ask if she is leaving, when she comes to a stop.

“Oh,” Hawke breathes, and there is surprise in the soft sound, though he can’t immediately tell if it’s the good or the bad sort. But he follows the line of her gaze, and knows with his next breath, just what it is that she’s looking at.

Nothing is left of the farmhouse she’s told him of, the one that exists in his memory as a warm place, slightly cramped for three children, with wooden beams and nooks to hide in; a loose plank that always creaks sitting just beyond the front door, and that’s betrayed her more than once. But it’s not surprising that the house no longer stands. What is surprising, Fenris thinks, is the sprouting of weeds that’s grown in its place. It takes decades for a blight-riven soil to yield life, and most of Lothering bears signs that it will be long years yet before it’s even close to habitable. But the small plot of land that had once belonged to the Hawkes sits, an aberration of green in a world of brown-and-grey.

“It’s – overgrown.” She laughs. “Fancy that.”

His hand seeks out hers, and when she looks up he finds her smiling. A sight far rarer than her poor humour, these days. “I suppose you expect some degree of sentimentality.”

“I would not hold it against you.”

Hawke hums, as she does when she can’t find her answers quickly enough, but he keeps the remark to himself.

She glances down then. The toe of her boot, brown from the mud, nudges a small weed, too scraggly to boast much growth. A small white bud hides amidst the dark leaves, unopened. “Bethany used to love these.”

It’s an offhand comment, a murmur that betrays none of her thoughts. But he hears the silent query; what she won’t voice out loud.  _The Veil is thin these days_ , they say. Spirits slip through the cracks. And she’d told him once, of a spirit she’d encountered in the Fade, the Divine in everything but flesh.

_Perhaps._

They don’t speak of it, as they turn to walk back, away from the ruined village and what had once been her home. But her smile lingers, longer than he’s seen it do in months. Perhaps it’s not what it seems, but for once he’s inclined to believe this, far-fetched though the thought might be.

He’s never met her sister, but the Hawke stubbornness is, after all, something to behold.


End file.
